Bootlegs

"I have no problem with bootlegs, although every time I say that, my lawyer says, 'Oh yes you do.'" - Paul McCartney

The Beatles are one of the most bootlegged acts in recorded music history, and high quality bootlegs are much sought-after. Original pressings of popular bootlegs can command significant money.

Early Beatles bootlegs were extremely poor quality and were mostly recycled from other bootlegs - some even featured material credited to the Beatles but clearly was not. More recent footage released on CD, most notably of the Let It Be sessions and by labels such as Genuine Pig, Swinging Pig, and Yellow Dog, is of much better quality.

Whenever I try and explain my chief passion in life (collecting Beatles recordings) to somebody who has limited knowledge of the music business, I always get stuck in the same spot: explaining how bootlegs come to be. "You mean you have songs that were never sold to the public? How did you get these tapes if they weren’t released?" Actually, this is a great question and one that is relatively unexamined compared with more pointless questions like "Did Paul really die in 1966?" or "Did Yoko break up The Beatles?" (No and no, in case you hadn’t heard).

The Fifth Beatle is the untold true story of Brian Epstein, the visionary manager who discovered and guided the Beatles - from their gigs in a tiny cellar in Liverpool to unprecedented international stardom.

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